saturday, as i sat in a sewing class channeling all three braincells left in my head toward learning how to use the serger my mom gave me for christmas, the teacher looked at me, shook her head, and said,

“mary allison, why do you have to be so different?”

she was right. the supplies i had purchased were different from everyone else’s. they were passable but different, and my serger came with it’s own unique requirements for threading. these were the differences to which she was referring. but as i answered, i had a whole host of other experiences in mind.

“i’ve been asking myself the same question for my whole life!” i retorted.

of course i know that in the grand scheme of things, i am not so unique. i know a gal who divides her time between climbing rocks in alaska and farming cotton in alabama. i am just a gal who divides my time between mothering, ministering, and co-owning a fabric shop. i am also probably just like everyone else in the world who is struck, every once in a while, by the overwhelming sense that i am an oddball.

but these days, in the context of church, these moments of self-oddball-realization are no longer an occasional thing for me. i have grown to anticipate and guard against inevitable comments about my clothes (yellow jeans! oh my!) and my hair (an unnatural red). but these remarks only hurt me because they are layered on top of the mean things i tell myself about why i no longer fit in in church. i am a bad person because i don’t believe what everyone else believes. on top of that, i am an ungrateful person because i don’t think that church should exist to glorify the church. clearly, i have not become the person those loving church people had in mind when they were contributing to my upbringing. i am so, disappointingly different.

last summer, my friend erin lane asked me to write an essay for an upcoming book entitled talking taboo: american christian women get frank about faith. i was to write about some aspect of my faith and experience of church that seems too shameful or too risky to admit. i quickly said yes because almost every thought in my head about faith and church feels taboo. finally, i had landed in a field in which i am a true expert! i submitted several topics for consideration, all of which positioned me to speak as a christian woman. each time, erin wrote back and asserted that she wanted me to speak as a christian woman leader… a minister.

i tried this. i tried drawing from the experiences i have had in ministry that i imagine closely resemble the vocations of my more normal, less disruptive colleagues. but this felt so inauthentic that i wrote erin and told her that i didn’t think i could contribute to the project. she left the window open for me to participate, and i told myself that if i woke up one morning with an essay idea that would allow me to speak from a place of sincerity and fulfill erin’s requests, i would give it another shot.

as it happened, i did wake up one morning, several weeks after the deadline, with an urgent impulse to write. i cranked out an entire essay in a couple of hours, turned it in, and marveled for weeks to follow about how wonderful it was to feel so at home while doing something ministry-related. i was able to cherish this feeling for a couple of months before my fears set in. in the months and weeks and days before the book was to go to the publisher, i agonized over whether to withdraw my piece from the project. i was afraid then, and i remain afraid, that the level of truth-telling that shapes my essay will translate into a solid and obvious agreement among all parties involved that there is, indeed, no place for me in the faith community of loving people who raised me. everyone will know what i have known for years: i am a bad person because i don’t believe what everyone else believes. on top of that, i am an ungrateful person because i don’t think that church should exist to glorify the church. i am so, disappointingly different.

the book is set to come out in october. my face and unnaturally red hair are on the cover. and inside, my essay is entitled, “my secret buddhist life.”

there is an indigogo campaign going on now to raise money to host conferences and virtual opportunities for women all over the country to
“talk taboo” with one another. perhaps the chance to talk about the ways in which religion has shaped our shameful inner monologues will result in wonderful, at-home feelings like those i had in the few months after i turned in my essay. if this is something you’d like to help promote, please visit the link above.

meanwhile, if anyone knows of an ashram in india that’s got an opening in late october for a woman wearing yellow jeans, please let me know!

if you could take a gander into the recesses of my brain these days, you would see something like this:

yes, this is my kitchen. yes, that is a floaty. yes, it’s january. that about sums it up.

the disarray that once marked only my physical world has elbowed its way into my head. i find myself in awe of mothers who are still able to form and share coherent, insightful ideas. when i rummage around underneath the bibs and soccer trophies from two years ago, all i can come up with is a long-winded, ever-growing, increasingly hostile, feminist rant.

i see friends in restaurants and get random emails from folks who are wondering what happened to my regular posts. i tell them about the not-so-nice rant that i am not-so-eager to share. they all tell me to share it. “your blog is all about honesty, they say.” “aren’t you the one who preaches that it’s our generation’s job to tell the truth?”

yes. dammit.

it’s just that i fear that my writing skills aren’t sophisticated enough to temper and organize the fire that could be unleashed on the internet of all places. for example, this is just a small portion of the mess that has exploded into my thoughts.

+++

observation: a husband arriving home from work with eleven grocery items in tow should not be mistaken for jesus christ.

if you are at my house when this happens, there is no need to make a fuss about this display of ordinary responsibility. it is true that grocery shopping has traditionally been “woman’s work,” and i am thrilled to have a progressive husband. but nobody falls all over themselves when i go to my part time job outside of the home, which greatly resembles what has traditionally been called “man’s work.”

furthermore, when i carry on with all of my work, both inside the home and outside the home, i do so with the constant feeling that i am falling short. there are always mountains of laundry on the couch in my bedroom. there are always dirty dishes in the sink. there are always deeper relationships to forge with the college students i encounter at work. my part-time ministry, though it is gaining momentum, looks meager next to the full-time ministries happening all around me.

my progressive husband (who really is a good one!) experiences the opposite phenomenon. he’s good at his job, and he is able to dedicate the proper time and energy to it. he’s involved in the kids’ lives, and he even folds laundry. in all of his work, inside and outside the home, he blows the expectations out of the water. in fact, he walks on water, some would say.

the problem is not that other wives elevate my spouse to divine status. rather, the issue is that in the south, where i live, the sight of a dad pushing a grocery cart is (apparently) still a shocking display. women working outside of the home? that’s ordinary. but men folding laundry? what a miracle!

and here is my profound conclusion, folks. are you ready for it? okay. here it comes: THIS IS NOT FAIR.

+++

end of rant #1. more to come. consider yourself warned.

p.s. you’re welcome, anna.

i was in first grade when my teacher read the mrs. piggle-wiggle stories to our class after lunch every day.  i remember quite a few details about betty macdonald’s characters and their ailments. i also remember putting a band aid box in my teacher’s chair when she interrupted story time to fetch something from her desk. she returned to her chair and crushed the box as our class erupted with laughter. i ended up in the hall but it was worth it. clearly, i would have been a good candidate for one of mrs. piggle-wiggle’s cures!

but now that i am reading mrs. piggle-wiggle to the monkey, i am surprised at how much i do not remember about these little story gems. i do not, for example, remember this hilarious fossil of a conversation between mr. and mrs. russell:

mr. russell came whistling into breakfast. he said mildly, “oh, scrambled eggs again. i was hoping for sausages and buckwheat cakes.” mrs. russell said, “we had sausages and buckwheat cakes yesterday morning.” mr. russell said, “what about brook trout? bill smith has’em nearly every morning.” mrs. russell said crossly, “perhaps that is why he looks like a trout and his wife looks like a great big halibut” (mrs. piggle-wiggle, betty macdonald, 117).

mrs. russell exibited quite a bit of spunk and self-assurance for 1947, right?

but even more striking than the quick wit of mrs. russell are the phone conversations the mothers have with each other in every chapter. while the children’s bad behaviors and mrs. piggle-wiggle’s unorthodox cures delight the kids, surely these ridiculous phone chats were meant to entertain the mothers. for example, who has never been in an exchange such as this?

“hello, mrs. bags, this is hubert’s mother and i am so disappointed in hubert. he has such lovely toys — his grandfather sends them to him every christmas, you know — but he does not take care of them at all. he just leaves them all over his room for me to pick up every morning.” mrs. bags said, “well, i’m sorry, mrs. prentiss, but i can’t help you because you see, i think it’s too late.” “why, it’s only nine-thirty,” said hubert’s mother. “oh, i mean late in life,” said mrs. bags. “you see, we started ermintrude picking up her toys when she was six months old. ‘a place for everything and everything in its place,’ we have always told ermintrude. now, she is so neat that she becomes hysterical if she sees a crumb on the floor” (22).

in her phone-conversations-gone-wrong, bettty macdonald illuminates and exaggerates the miscommunication, judgement, and posturing that often come between mothers. every night, as i read the monkey his chapter of mrs. piggle-wiggle, i find myself laughing and rolling my eyes as i am reminded about something i have said to another mother or something another mother has said to me. the children in macdonald’s books are not the only ones behaving badly. they’re not the only ones being cured either.

perhaps this is why betty macdonald’s books have endured for over sixty years.  

if the monkey were to plan a wedding, he would follow the lead of julia roberts in steel magnolias. in other words, “pink is his signature color.”

as the mom of this pink-loving fellow, i have enjoyed MANY a self-administered pats on the back for allowing the monkey to exist outside of society’s color rules for boys and girls. you should see me at the cupcake counter, for example, proudly presenting both boys with their requested pink “plain janes.” i love myself in those moments.

photo from http://liplickin.blogspot.com/

but last week while we in asheville, the pink craze got a little more complicated when i took the monkey to pick out this season’s “creek walking shoes.” from a lovely, multicolored bouquet of keen sandals, the monkey plucked these with great zeal:

he was as pleased as punch (pun intended). i, on the other hand, was faced with an unexpected choice. is it my job to protect my children from teasing, or is it my job to help them be their truest selves? i hated myself in that moment.

i texted andy the above picture along with the words, “HELP! what should i do?”

his sentiments were the same as my own. we both want to protect our children from teasing AND help them be their truest selves. meanwhile, the monkey commenced to skip around the store in the fabulous pink shoes.

i contemplated my next move and imagined the silent horror of the sweetly-smiling sales woman, observing my attempts to squelch my son’s spirit. should i explain to my four-year-old that kids are mean, and that in our more traditional town, kids are mean AND traditional? or should i just purchase the pink shoes and hope for the best?

i opted for plan C. we revisited the multicolored bouquet of keen sandals “just to check for any other colors we might like.” and lo and behold, there was another pair on the display that was calling the monkey’s name. the dark pink pair:

now this pair is much more pink in person than the above picture reveals, but i didn’t care. surely he could be his true self in these shoes AND avoid teasing. we bought the shoes, and i was off the hook.

but only temporarily. i’m convinced that time and again, i will be revisiting the questions i asked myself in the shoe store. ultimately, i believe that it’s healthy to be selective about when, where, and with whom we reveal the deepest parts of who we are. i want to teach my kids to be selective. unfortunately, nobody learns to be selective without being teased.

i’m not sure i did the right thing. i am not writing to defend my choice. i’m just saying that in parenting, everything is complicated. nothing is as simple as wanting my kids to feel the cool mountain stream washing over their hot summer feet.

i used to wonder why middle school girls are so mean to each other. why the seismic shift of affections, the dramatic purchasing and demolishing of “best friend” necklaces, the endless note-passing and back-stabbing, and the constant labeling and striving for that which is popular?

yesterday, as my children were wailing (again) at the prospect of spending time with me while their daddy went out for a jog, it hit me: middle school misery is part of the preparation-for-motherhood process. only such a colossal test of self-esteem could come close to readying a gal for the sucker punch that comes when, apropos to nothing, she falls out of favor with her children.

when “the daddy phase” began a few months ago and my children began approximating time spent with me to sharing a cage with a hideous monster, i remained strong. i returned their unhappy scowls with hugs and kisses. when the monkey set aside an entire day to cry about the misfortune that his preferred parent has a full-time job, i remained calm. when i returned home from a two-day vacation last week to the monkey’s disappointment that “i didn’t stay away longer,” i made myself ignore these words. but yesterday’s pathetic chorus of daddy-wanting hysterics was just too much. if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. i starting crying myself.

so here i am, 34 going on 13, dissecting the anatomy of the popular parent. from my non-randomized qualitative study of one, i can conclude that popular parents are not preoccupied with cooking, cleaning, folding, and typing. popular parents are fun! they are like cruise directors, shuffling two kids to four fabulous locations all in the time that it would take me to locate and cram on the necessary shoes. never mind that popular parents just grab the first ill fitting shoes they see. everyone is having the time of their lives!

the next thing i know, i am also studying the anatomy of the unpopular parent by way of yet another non-randomized qualitative study of one. at its best, this “research” leads me to the conclusion that unpopular parents are simply not fun. at its worst, it is a bit like what anne lamott calls KFKD radio:

“out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing, the lists of all the things one doesn’t do well, all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime, the doubt, the assertion that everything one touches turns to shit, that one doesn’t do relationships well, that one is in every way a fraud, incapable of selfless love, that one has no talent or insight, and on and on and on” (bird by bird).

i made it through  middle school in one piece. surely i can keep myself intact in the face of a couple of preschool boys. step one: find a new radio station.

my post today is an essay i wrote for a fabulous blog project called “a liberated life.” vanessa and sarah solicit and post essays wherein women of every age and stage chronicle their joys and concerns along the path toward liberation.

here’s an excerpt, but you’ll have to scurry over to “a liberated life” to read the rest:

Liberation, as it turns out, is not as simple as a dream job or a grad school diploma, or a positive pregnancy test, or a happy home. In fact, I cannot even begin to envision what a liberated life might look like for today’s mothers, whose souls brim with enough passion and opportunity to fill a warehouse full of moon bounces and inflatable slides. There is an anxiety that comes with motherhood that has far outgrown the widespread dreams for balance and the tired juggling metaphors. Scientists study it, and talk show hosts allude to it, but this anxiety, for the most part, remains undefined.

how would YOU define a liberated life?

dear monkey,

you behaved like a rabid banshee today at our local “paint your own pottery” establishment. you wanted to hold my cell phone in your glazy orange hands. then you didn’t want to wash your hands. then you had to tee tee but didn’t like the type of potty they had there. then you writhed around on a floor that apparently hasn’t been mopped since 1969.

there were Smug Old Women there (SOWs). i could taste their judgement. when i tried to elicit their sympathy by making a joke, they just shook their heads and kept painting football mascots on chip-and-dip platters. perhaps they were thinking that i shouldn’t have spanked you, or that i should have spanked you sooner. perhaps they looked disdainfully upon a far off world where four-year-olds think they are entitled to use smart phones. i don’t know exactly what they were thinking but i do know this: no matter how much they loathed me, i loathed me more.

you spilled green glaze on the floor, on your shoe, and in your hair. to my credit, your green apparel didn’t bother me. i cleaned it up, as well as the floor. i’m cool like that. the bird painted a yellow mustache on his face. again, no worries. i dig guys with facial hair.

in the car, on the way home, you tried to hit me with a red plastic guitar. and that’s when it occurred to me that if motherhood were a regular job, i’d be an idiot to keep reporting to work everyday.

but i’m your mom, and i love you, and i will report to work every single day.

there are going to be a few changes in the term “work,” however. we are never going to leave the house again. the floors here are clean, and there are no SOWs here painting colonal reb images on platters. there are places here, completely devoid of ceramics, where i can deposit the bird while i help you carry out the tasks of daily life. there is a time-out facility, otherwise known as YOUR ROOM, conveniently located on the second floor. and perhaps most importantly, there is a bottle of wine in our fridge.

love,

mom

one of the best parts of facilitating this little makeshift blog is that readers regularly send me recent and provocative articles about the state of modern motherhood. thank you, and keep ’em coming!

the last two articles i received are friction-inciting commentaries on the cultural construction of motherhood. one deliniates the high child nurturing standards held by american women. the other investigates the high career-related standards held by this same set. taken together, these articles reveal a veritable fog of ridiculous expectations obscuring nearly every aspect of women’s lives.

the first is a wall street journal article by erica jong describing the attachment parenting craze as a sort of self-inflicted prison for mothers, who, despite their best kid-wearing, cloth-diapering, baby-food-making efforts are never able to meet the socially accepted standard for mothering, which was created in large part by dr. sears. but no matter what one’s thoughts are regarding attachment parenting, it’s hard to disagree with jong’s lament: “rarely does a new mother hear these golden words: “do the best you can; there are no rules.”

the second article is jessica olien’s slate magazine exploration into the culture of motherhood in the netherlands, where part-time work, outings with friends, and self-care are celebrated ways for moms to spend time. as opposed to the guilt felt by american mothers who remove themselves from the full-time workforce, dutch women do not seem to link their self-esteems to their workforce prowess. the conclusion is that the drive that american women have assumed in order to further women’s progress has “set us up for a world in which none of us is having any fun.”

olien writes,

“…american women as a whole are not getting any happier. if anything, the studies show that we are emotionally less well-off than we were before.”

high standards have the potential to launch us into more meaningful, productive, and useful lives. but perhaps something has gotten lost in translation between our feminist fore mothers, who constructed domestic co-ops and deconstructed glass ceilings, and those modern women who have inherited big tasks that have somehow become detached from the big dreams that birthed them. what was once a grand vision of equality seems now to feel more like a universal clamoring for perfection in every arena. the guilt that ensues squelches the kind of big dreaming that women once had for the state of the world. and so, in the words of jong, we reduce our visions to the scope of our homes and families. “[we] substitute our own small world for the world as a whole.”  

standards ought to be the bi-product of dreams, the way they came into this world in the first place. so perhaps the key to generating a world that is fairer (and for heaven’s sake, MORE FUN) is to leave our faithful posts as the keepers of the rules and ideals. if we join the ranks of the dreamers, perhaps the standards we generate will make more sense in our contexts. perhaps standards will not imprison us but free us. but the only way to get there is to start where the women before us started: with a vision of a better life.

first grade, for me, was when the curriculum ceased to be play-based. the active life of preschool and kindergarten, with all of its hiding and seeking and cooking and dancing, became fodder for my daydreams as i plugged away at my little wooden first grade desk at what was unabashedly called “seatwork.” i resisted this stationary kind of learning so much that i almost failed the first grade, but in the face of at least eleven more years of school, i learned to expand my knowledge within the confines of the system. unknowingly, i separated the parts of me that were once beautifully integrated in childhood: mental and physical exercise. there were spelling tests and there was recess. there was long division, and there was sports practice. there was contemporary theology and there was jogging. as i was being created into a contributing member of society, there was evening, and there was morning for approximately 4,140 days.

as i was riding my bicycle on the greenline yesterday with the bird in tow, i lapsed into the guilty reflection that is common to upper middle class mothers. i calculated how many days i have spent formally acquiring knowledge in educational settings, and i came up with the above number. then i commenced to worry that “my brain is turning to mush.” i thought of my diplomas that are not framed in an office but are still tucked away in their little black folders between photo albums of my kids’ first years and behind a colorful butcher paper masterpiece that the monkey created at school. i thought of the staggering amount of guilt that is experienced as women like me, who have spent the majority of our lives doing “seatwork,” are plunged into the unfamiliar world of mothering, where equations and essays are irrelevant. i started plotting my next vocational move once the kids are in school, work that would justify my masters degree and present a reason to frame those diplomas. and then i remembered another stark contrast between life in educational systems and life as a mostly stay-at-home-mom: the former is future-oriented by design. the latter can only be fully embraced by living in the present.

i went on like this for an hour — enough time for the bird and me to ride to shelby farms and back into town. i reflected on the way that my life now involves so much physical activity — schlepping kids, groceries, and laundry, pushing the steam mop, averting disasters, rushing to disentangle the climbing bird from all manor of hanging garage tools. the seatwork smarty pants in me unleashed more judgement. “what a waste,” she said.

and then, miraculously, i remembered who i was in the first place, before the confines of first grade hit, before i spent 4,140 days compartmentalizing mental and physical excercise. i am someone who loves a play-based curriculum and an integrated life. and that is precisely what i’ve got right now.

so as the bird and i finished up our bike ride and went on to schlepp the week’s groceries, i laid the guilt to rest. perhaps mothering young children is a chance to return to a more natural state of being, a time to collect all of the scattered parts of me and put them back together.